No4 Fore-end question

**8udr** · 05-16-2011 09:19 AM

I have a No4 action rebarrelled in 7.62/308, the barrel is a Parker Hale T4 it measures .945 inches just forward of the breech, I have recently acquired a full set of unissued woodwork for a No4 and I would like to know if it would be possible to convert this rifle to something along the lines of an L39. ie is the barrel too wide to fit this woodwork and am I just going to ruin it by rasping it away. I have studied as many articles on this site as I can find on restocking but none mention a maximum barrel width. Would I be better fitting a sporter fore-end?

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**villiers** · 05-16-2011 10:17 AM

Is the No 4 a Mk 1 or a 2 (and for which one is the new fore-end)?

**8udr** · 05-16-2011 10:48 AM

The action is a no4 mk2 although I dont see what difference the mark makes.

**Thunderbox** · 05-16-2011 01:13 PM

You can fit an L39-style forend to a rifle with a T4 barrel although, IIRC, the T4 barrel is a bit fatter than an Enfield barrel and so leads to tighter tolerances when you come to ream the forend and handguards. If the forend is a bit thin to start with, then you can end up with very thin forend and handguard walls where the barrel emerges from the forend. Its common to find "first generation" No4 target rifles with T4 barrels, but most of these use after market "sporter" or target forends without any top handguards. The actual T4 rifles themselves were built with two versions of an open-top target forend.